Having just deleted my commendation about locking that topic, I've just reassesed my opinion.

I don't agree with cencorship of any kind, and am ashamed that I at first endorsed the locking of debate on this forum.

Some of the posts on this forum may be stupid, but we should either learn to ignore them or accept the moderator's right to lock certain topics for legal or other reasons that may put the future of this forum in jeopardy.

Either way, I now have become so used to reading ignorant opinions that I am impervious to them.

"Is the sun dimmed that gnats do fly into it?" - Shakespeare

Keats has nothing to fear, or his admirers from those out to ridicule him.

Keats has nothing to fear, or his admirers from those out to ridicule him.

Enh. What's with the melodrama.
Keats is dead - you're quite right he has nothing to fear. You may be impervious to ignorant opinions, and I'll rightly admit so am I, but there's a fine line between innocent ignorance and wilful insolence. The latter is the reason many forums are moderated.

So: sorry for the cynicism, but in this I totally support Golyadkin's decision (which is perhaps to be expected, since I was the one who called for moderation in the first place).

To me, locking a thread, deleting a message or even banning a member are possible ultimate actions that can be necessary for moderating a forum.
However, in the interest of an open discussion and for pragmatic reasons I consider them really as ultimate steps only to be used when all "diplomacy" has failed.

- In an international forum, we have to agree on very open standards and be tolerant in order not to exclude anybody for different moral standards as long as he is participating in a somewhat productive way. The question of drug-abuse and homosexuality principally doesn't seem far-fetched to me when you talk about literature. But I agree with despondence that if this question is used for wilful insolence, moderation can be necessary.
- From a pragmatic point of view, locking a thread or banning a member can have the opposite effect of the one desired: Those who write insolent messages are often just trying to provoke, and are just waiting for sanctions in order to react by opening new threads and creating new member accounts. So by restrictive moderation one can happen to enter into their game and help them turning the forum into the playground of their provocations, which only disturb us from the interesting subjects.

So I feel that as little restriction as possible and as much as necessary is the best solution. In case of doubt, tolerance seems to me better for the discussion and even for the quality of the forum. But the ultimate decision is in the hands of the moderator.

On this basis, I fully support Golyadkins decision to close the thread in question. A moderator has to decide whether a message is still tolerable and to take the necessary sanctions if it is not. If somebody is willing to do this job, we should accept that his decisions are partly subjective and respect them even if we would perhaps have decided differently in one or the other question.